‘Bilingual’ 3yo reluctant to speak minority language

[SiberFox]

We live in the UK, my 3.5yo daughter has been born here. My husband is English.

I have used my native language with my daughter since birth. I speak to her in my language, read to her, she listens to songs and watches cartoons in my language. My family live far away but we visit annually for long stretches eg a few weeks at a time. DD understands my language nearly as well as she does English, and when we visit my family, it takes her about a week to start speaking it a lot.

English is undoubtedly much easier for her with my husband and his family and majority of people around us, nursery etc. I speak with my family on video regularly with my DD and I’ve started taking her to a Saturday class/playgroup using my language.

But once we come back to the UK she drops my language and says occasional words or can repeat things if I ask but overall she obviously doesn’t want to use it because it’s hard. She’s memorised some of the poems and stories I often read to her but you can barely understand what she’s saying as it’s not the same language family as English and hard to master.

I wonder if

• there is hope that she will start using my language more - with my family - as she grows older? Her communication at 3yo as fairly basic so that they understand her anyway but will she see the value of speaking their language? Is there hope..
• anything else I could be doing? I try hard to create situations to speak my language but it’s rare that I can, there aren’t that many of us in the uk. I don’t subscribe to the idea of pretending to not understand her or refuse to respond to her unless she speaks my language because it’s not true/ I have to speak English to my husband and people around me

i feel the pressure from my family that she doesn’t speak the language but I think that’s not helpful. Sometimes I feel like all my interactions with her have to be learning opportunities and it’s not fun. I think I need to let go a bit but I feel deflated that there’s so little progress with active language despite all my efforts..

Keep going. She is 3.5 yo.
It's up and down raising a bilingual child.

I've got a 20-year-old and an 18-year-old, both bilingual. We've gone through waves of them embracing the second language, and waves of them ignoring it completely! You just keep persevering.
Their father always spoke to them in his language, but they could respond in whatever way they wanted. Of course, during holidays and with his family, they always spoke their language; if a film or TV show was originally in their language, it stayed in their language, sometimes with subtitles when they were young, but we didn't switch the audio.
I'd say the 20-year-old is pretty much fluent in both and switches seamlessly; the 18-year-old gets everything but, for a variety of reasons, is less keen/confident about speaking it.

The families I've known that have successfully raised bilingual children have had to be really strict about OPOL.
If you speak to your children in your language and they respond in English, then don't reply. Make them use your language with you. The

keep it up
watch minority language tv shows
seek out play groups in your language

some dc don't speak, but understand very well.

Don't stress, this is very common.

Keep the exposure up even if she is not using it back. It is no longer recommended to pretend you don't speak the language they want you to use.

Sometimes people find it helpful to do things like have all TV in the minority language so that there's something of a pull towards it - depending on what language it is you might be able to get DVDs imported or find streaming content online, perhaps with a VPN.

The Saturday class sounds great. If you can meet other families and perhaps play with them one on one that will also help, then you can have conversations with the parent(s) in that language which she can overhear and sometimes the children will use the minority language together, sometimes English.

If she uses it when you visit family then that shows you she has not lost the skill even if she prefers not to use it. It will get easier as she gets older. I think this annual trip will be really important and it is better to have one long trip than several shorter ones.

DS (nearly 6) is nearly bilingual but stronger in English because of me, nursery, school, friends. His dad is French and they do French school on the weekends. It's common for some communities to set up weekend schools or social groups although the nearest be might be a bit far. We have people come all over the county for ours and the non-French parents can take lessons too. Maybe your community has similar?

DP is a bit lax on OPOL but does try to be exclusive especially when I'm not around. My French is rubbish and while I appreciate the lessons, I could really do with Saturday mornings to myself again!

That gives me hope, thank you. Guess I just need to accept this isn’t a linear progression story.

That’s really helpful, thank you

Yes the Saturday school we started going to sounds very similar to yours. We moved house recently partially for this reason, I do hope it helps.

Our next door neighbours are French and their kids are fluent in both languages, it’s amazing to see and maybe I’ve been comparing too much 🫤, bad habit.

Appreciate it’s a different situation but we are English living in Germany. We speak English at home but my kids went to German kindergarten & school.

When my youngest was around 3 she wouldn’t speak any German, despite clearly understanding everything. The kindergarten told me it was very normal and that just be patient and it’ll come. There’s no straight line with bilingual kids, it often clicks suddenly.

She’s now 9 & completely bilingual. Never shuts up in either language 😆

Leave her alone, and for goodness sake, don't do the revising to answer her if she speaks to you in English.
She's 3 and a half. Even her primary language is still developing. And if you make her speaking your language, into a burden, it's going to be counter-productive and psychologically bad for her.

My late DH was exposed to his father's language throughout childhood. He completely understood it, but refused to speak it. He was a shy kid, and his dad sensibly left him alone on this.

Don't let pressure from your family have a detrimental effect on your child's wellbeing and your relationship with her.

Very well said.

The idea of ignoring a child because she spoke in the “wrong” language is out of order.

...don't do the revising to answer her if she speaks to you in English.

Revising should be 'refusing' obv. Autocorrect sucks.

It's tricky but I think you're doing all the right things.
As the minority language speaker in a bilingual household I feel your pain. I found the ages of 2-4 especially challenging because my child would be chatting away to my DH in her stronger language, and then having much more basic conversations with me in the minority one. I was so sad that we weren't communicating as well as they were.
From about 4, she really clicked in my language and since then it's been much better.
I second all the advice about only watching TV in your language, and the play group could be a game changer. Speaking with adults is all very well but it's peer interactions that really get them motivated I find. Equally when you visit your home country, try and get her lots of playtime with other kids. It's amazing what a leap it makes!

keep up the yearly trip for a few weeks. I’m convinced the only reason my two DC speak my native language is because we visited for 3-4 weeks at a time and also had my family come to visit us. The kids were always noticeably stronger in the minority language afterwards.

i tried my best to do OPOL and to be consistent, but I don’t believe they would have picked up speaking only because of me.

For both of mine, they used to say English sentences with the odd word in the minority language until one of our 4 week trips when they were 4.5 - 5 and it suddenly clicked and they spoke my language back to me when we got back home. It still gives me goosebumps when I think of that moment I realised that it did actually work out and they are choosing to speak my language.

What helped my eldest immensely in their vocabulary are Audiobooks in the minority language (like the stories you get for Tonie Boxes), Spotify is full of them. Cartoons are too visual, my children would have happily watched them in any language even if they didn’t understand a word.

Oh, and regarding the replying/not replying if she speaks in her stronger language, what I do is always repeat what she says in my language so she gets used to hearing it, and I do encourage her to say it in my language when I know that she knows how to but is just being lazy. So definitely not ignoring her, but not just letting her 'get away' with it.
Sometimes it's hard to keep pushing but if you really want her to speak your language you can't just take the path of least resistance.
Oh and finally does your DH speak your language? If he does I would encourage you to only speak your language as a family. If he doesn't then he should learn it and try to speak it with you both. Seeing him giving it value and wanting to learn will increase its prestige for her.

As children, my mother always spoke to us in her language, we always replied in English. We also had books, comics, music etc. Both my sister and I are fluent in my mother's language. I only started speaking to my mother in her own language when I was an adult, although I spoke to everyone else, family, friends etc in her language when we were in her country.

Your daughter is interpreting in her head, which when you think about her only being 3.5 years old, is pretty remarkable. This is exactly what I used to do as a child (and still do). It's hard to explain, but my brain works in both languages, so my thoughts are not always in english. Even when I'm in the UK, my other language is running in the background and sometimes that vocabulary pops into my conversation. It's a weird thing being bilingual.

3 and a half is still so young so I think she just needs time. We do OPOL, my husband is Italian, and her screen time is pretty much all in Italian (and always has been) - using a VPN if we have to. She understands fluently in both Italian and English.

She's now nearly 6 and has just started an Italian Saturday class this term and she's already making much more effort during weekly family calls to say things in Italian now, which is lovely to see. I think seeing other children trying to speak has spurred her on as she is pretty competitive haha.

I think it was in the last year my husband made a point that if she wanted something off him or him to do something then she had to ask if Italian. He would talk her through the sentences but she had to try and then say the complete sentence. Tbh I'm not sure that this didn't discourage her. We've seen a speech and language therapist for my youngest due to speech delay and since modelling speech instead of forcing/overencouraging him to say things in the same way, he's come on a lot.

I wouldn't force her basically, and give it time. If she replies in English that's fine, especially if her understanding is good. Modelling the language for her to say is what I would do. It does seem like they will never speak it though!

Well worth being bilingual English/French. I can read French but speaking it that's another story. Beautiful language. So much written in French. English is a beautiful language too.

I am trying to learn German and I watch stuff like Peppa Pig in German. Peppa Wutz. That's about my level of German. Its fun, though.

Would an aupair from your home country be an option?

Is it Polish, apparently Polish is a very hard language to learn?

Your DD was born in England, she is English in a country where English is spoken. Why is it OK to make her use another language? Unless its French or Spanish, I can't see the point in her learning another language. Just saying.

You need to give her a reason to.

I am in the same position as you, but in another country, and at that age it was a lot of hard work. No child naturally wants the difficulty of swapping languages, so you need to motivate them.

Make your time with them really fun, and have games/activities/stories etc, that are only in your language. For example, my son went through a Pokémon phase, and I made sure that every pieces of content for that was in my language, and as a result he could only really engage with it in my own language. Also he got really into Lego, and I'm the only one who plays that with him, and I'll play it with him, talking in my language etc. Same with a series of children's books that he loved, that we only had in his second language etc. Repeat this for loads of stuff, so that you have a chunk of the fun/enjoyment of their life is happening in your language, as well as the other language, and they will want to speak it.

But if all the exciting fun stuff is happening in their "first" language, and then with the second parent it feels like learning - you'll struggle.

It is a lot of work, because you basically have to compensate for the fact that 80% of their life is one language, and you are the 20% normally. So you end up having to put far more effort and time in to compensating, and making it closer to 50-50

So ignorant